And Then Everything Changed

When bombs reached her home in Zagreb, Croatia in 1991, Ana Tajder, the daughter of actress/artist Jagoda Kaloper and architect Radovan Tajder, fled to Vienna to escape the war and soon made Vienna her home. 

Though her parents were artists Ana rejected a life of creativity, choosing instead to pursue her MBA. But after nearly a dozen years working in marketing and advertising and for the UN, she began to experience depression, anxiety, and an overwhelming sense of burnout.  While home nursing herself through the flu one day she began to write and all at once rediscovered a passion she had forgotten. Soon after her first novel From Barbie to Vibrator  was published in Croatia in 2008 and Austria in 2009. In 2010, she was awarded the prestigious Austrian State Grant for Literature for her second novel Titoland. 

In this episode Ana who is now a journalist and author, a podcaster and mother, shares her story of the painful scoliosis surgery she endured as a teenager, losing her home and country to war, and how she created a life for herself she wouldn’t trade for anything. Though she witnessed her husband battle cancer and lost her mother to lung cancer, Ana feels blessed and grateful for where she is today. She believes the ultimate goal in life is to find the one thing you’re meant to do and she wouldn’t change hers for anything, regardless of the experiences she’s gone through.

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